Changes Are Inevitable / Fernando Damaso #Cuba

clip_image0028Very few doubt that changes are happening in Cuba, although they are epidermal and too slow. Also, very few doubt they should deeper, more comprehensive and faster. The “model” implemented beginning in 1959 has proved its failure: instead of resolving the problems it proposed to solve, it has worsened them, as well as created new ones. To cling to it, update it, tweak it, “decorate” it, and even disguise it, to present it as the only valid way out from the national crisis, only fools some: those who want to be fooled.

Most citizens, tired of broken promises and empty slogans, demand action. It’s true that many, still timid, do so in the solitude of their homes and among family and friends, without going any further. continue reading

Others, the minority, dare to raise their concerns publicly, to exercise their right to speak out and be part of national life. Although they are few, nothing takes away from the fact that sooner or later they may be many.

In any event, the changes have come, economic as well as political and social. No one can avoid them. So, these can occur peacefully, as a natural process of development, or violently, breaking barriers. Only cavemen prefer the latter. Most Cubans prefer the former. In any confrontation from positions of strength, it will always be our Nation that loses, our Nation that has already lost too much. Accumulating misfortunes and sufferings is not smart.

Sanity, tolerance and accountability must prevail among parties in conflict: some, accepting their mistakes, and applying the economic, political and social measures, to facilitate, deepen and accelerate change, others working for their implementation. Cuba belongs to everyone, and we will all help to save her, or she will sink with everyone on board. The year 2013, full of uncertainty, could be a good time to start to do so.

25 January 2013

Open the Wall! / Jeovany Jimenez Vega #Cuba

Granma-informaba-migratoria-Habana-octubre_PREIMA20130114_0138_40The implementation, as of this January 14th, of the Cuban political migratory reforms has generated hope unprecedented in more than 50 years for a people who suffered already for too long family separation and the grief of terrible deaths at sea. It is supposed that from this day forward that monster of the “white card” — the equivalent of the sacrosanct Exit Permit — ceased to exist and with it also the execrable figure of the “permanent exit” with which every Cuban who decided to leave his country for a specified time was banished against his will and which implied the automatic “outlawing” (that is seizure) of all he left behind, really serious things if you look at them from the correct perspective. continue reading

If I have had until now a rather skeptical position with relation to all this, no one should blame me; you have to keep in mind my condition as a Cuban doctor who lives inside of Cuba subordinated to a Minister who, as of 1999, decided that none of the professionals subordinated to him would leave his country, not even temporarily for vacation, until no fewer than five years passed after having solicited the “liberation” from his minister*.

Now it is said that the phantom ministerial resolution that made this extreme measure available has been overturned, which many digital sites and foreign press outlets have echoed, as have alternative Cuban media, but the truth is that my minister and my government have made no public declaration that officially confirms it, hence the issue unleashes the usual wave of speculation and rumors.

Personally I think that the Cuban authorities could have reasoned as follows: if the new Migratory Law, in Articles 24 and 25, by means of subsection f, establishes plainly that it does not permit professionals to travel freely “. . .by virtue of the rules directed to preserve the qualified work force. . .” then why keep in force that resolution designed exclusively for the personnel subordinated to the Minister of Public Health? Why keep two tools when one is sufficient? After all, in practical terms, something that before only affected professionals in my sector now is made to extend to the rest of the country’s professionals and technicians.

But not to be too intransigent I will hope that the time will come when someone says the last word. I hope that from today on no Cuban will be deprived of his right to travel; that no Cuban will be held against his will, on some pretext, bysome bureaucrat; that no one will be authorized to come and go from his country on conditions. For now, forgive me, gentlemen, I reserve the benefit of the doubt. I have never before wanted so intensely to be mistaken.

Jeovany Jimenez Vega

*Translator’s note: Prior to the so-called “migratory form” that just went into effect, EVERY doctor who asked to leave Cuba had to wait at least five years from the time of making the request before he or she could leave (if they were allowed to leave at all). Doctors on missions in foreign countries have had their passports held so they could not leave from those countries.

Translated by mlk

January 23 2013

Dilated Pupils / Reinaldo Escobar #Cuba

pupila-dilatadaWe’ve all had at some time the experience of checking the changes in our visual perception after our pupils dilate. In a dark room where we can’t even see our hands in front our face when we enter, bit by bit we come to distinguish the environment as our eyes become accustomed to the absence of light.

So we are in Cuba in relation to those little flashes of freedom that emerge from some of the measures taken by our leaders. continue reading

The most recent has been allowing us to watch the Venezuelan channel TELESUR. My colleague Michel Suarez reflected on this in Diario de Cuba, when he spoke about the this new pinhole in the dark. In the comments on his article there was no lack of those who, after ingesting huge gulps of the Coca Cola of forgetting, seemed not to understand the happiness that one drop of water brings to the thirsty, the photo of a country landscape when locked in a cell, an Internet connection at a speed of 56 kw/s in a Havana hotel…

So much time in the darkness has sharpened our vision and it will be this acuity that will allow us to find a way out, and I am not speaking of escape but of a bloodless and civilized solution.

Our rulers, or those “satraps usurping power” as my friend Ramón González prefers to say, will be in Chile now showing themselves off as democrats; who knows if they will promote, there, the ratification of the U.N. Human Rights Covenants now being demanded with such vehemence by Cuban civil society; who knows if, in February, when Raúl Castro is inaugurated for his second term, he will announce the deepening of this “reforms” and now someone will be able to buy a new car at a dealership, and the self-employed will be able to import raw materials, and the land leases will be extended for the current beneficiaries, or any other apparently minor detail.

Here we are, not blindfolded, but with our pupils dilated, detecting the pinholes.

Reinaldo Escobar

25 January 2013

What Are the Authorities Waiting For? / Laritza Diversent #Cuba

Caridad Reyes Roca and her daughter (Photo by author)
Caridad Reyes Roca and her daughter (Photo by author)
Caridad Reyes Roca traded homes with Ofelia de la Cruz de Armas in 2008. Three days later, the neighbor below complained about leaks from the bathroom. The wall and ceiling coverings were coming off. Caridad spent four years trying to undo the trade and return to her former property.

“My attorney was bought off by the other party,” she said. Caridad hired the attorney Yolanda Martiato Sanchez in January 2009. In June, without her consent, her counsel filed a notice of withdrawal that the Court of Havana accepted. Proceedings were closed. “I knew of the deception when I complained to the Council of State and they responded to me in court,” says Caridad. continue reading

“I complained, but the director of client relations at the Law Collective  Center of the Ministry of Justice said the withdrawal that was done behind my back caused me no harm,” she explains. In August, Martiato Sanchez had opened a new process for challenging the trade. But in February 2010 she was replaced by a colleague, Mr. Manuel Guzman. “As expected, the court dismissed the lawsuit,” said Caridad.

The judges felt that there was no absence of consent or fraud. According to them, the precarious state of the property was not hidden by the defendant. Now, the situation Caridad finds herself in is due to her “carelessness” and “negligent behavior.” However, to reach the ruling, it required a report from the Office of the Architect of the Community (OAC) of Arroyo Naranjo.

It was the same institution that, in October 2008, issued a technical report which according to Mrs. Cruz de Armas when she answered the complaint, accredited “the good technical condition of the property.” To date, Caridad Reyes has been unable to obtain a copy of that document.

Instead, at the request of Caridad herself, the OAC issued a new opinion in January 2009, with the result that the housing no longer met the requirements of habitability and therefore could not be considered “minimally adequate housing.” The document was signed by architect Elena Perez, Head of the institution and Caridad’s adjoining neighbor.

Cronyism, corruption

Elena Perez, chief of the OAC, is friends with Mrs. Ofelia de la Cruz de Armas, the woman sued by Charity; also because of the position she occupies, with attorney Martiatos Sanchez and the officials of Directorate of Municipal Housing of Arroyo Naranjo (DMV). The Havana Court however, ignored the conflict of interest and asked Elena Perez to appoint two experts to certify the construction technical condition of Caridad Reyes’ housing.

According to the report, the structural characteristics of the building were altered by construction that Caridad never undertook. “The heedlessness cannot not attributed to a fraudulent act of the other party,” the court ruled.

The fact is that in less than three months, the housing changed and no longer met the housing habitability requirements. This, however, did not suggest to the judges that the opinion of the OAC was falsified. Nothing made them suspect the architect, the DMV officials and the acting notary, nor the possible crime of falsification of documents.

But Caridad Reyes did not desist. She hired another lawyer, and while her appeal was dismissed by the Supreme Court, she asked the Arroyo Naranjo Municipal Housing Office to nullify the resolution authorizing the exchange. The request was denied and the case closed. And Caridad Reyes Roca sued the institution. The former Havana Hearing Examiner declared her request without merit. Caridad appealed to the Supreme Court and got the same answer.

The same OAC, in 2012, issued another Technical Report. The property, it notes, remains in poor condition, but it does not specify if it is uninhabitable and irreparable. The construction is devalued by  4,356.15 pesos in national currency (from the value it had when the trade was made) to 2,678.16 national pesos

Caridad Reyes filed written complaints at different levels of government: Provincial and Supreme Court, National Assembly, Council of State, the National Housing Institute, Ministry of Justice, the National Organization of Law Collectives and the Attorney General’s Office.

No investigation got to the bottom of the matter or evaluated the risk to her physical safety and that of her daughter, even though both belong to vulnerable social groups. Caridad Reyes Roca, 65, is retired, and is responsible for Misley Lázara Suarez, 30-years-old with Down syndrome.

Their lives are in danger because of the unsanitary conditions of the home. The wastewater must be manually evacuated. They sleep in the kitchen because of the risks of collapse in the bedroom. Reyes Roca suffers from urosepsis and chronic gastroenteritis. She has difficulties with antibiotic resistant bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus.

What are the authorities waiting for? For the ceiling to fall on their heads? What will happen to Misley Lázara if Caridad is not there to care for her? Those who because of their ambition deceived this elderly mother of a disabled child didn’t think about that.

Cronyism abounds in the Cuban legal system.

Laritza Diversent

Translated from DiariodeCuba.com

21 January 2013

More Than Just a Cable / Yoani Sanchez #Cuba

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Our parliament met in December. A diverse conglomeration of ages, social backgrounds, races and genders… but with a single political affiliation. More than six hundred deputies who say they represent a nation, when in reality they only speak in the name of one ideology. The pantomime of plurality, with statistics designed to impress, given the number of women, youth, mixed-race or workers within it, but not with diversity of thought. A rainbow with seven bands of the same color. Or almost, because the palette contains only red and olive-green. But it is not precisely this tame group of individuals applauding in the Palace of Conventions that I want to write about today, but the fiber optic cable between Cuba and Venezuela. continue reading

When Maimir Mesa, Minister of Telecommunications and Information, issued a report to the National Assembly last month, not a single word was published about the Alba-1 cable. Since August 2012, the newspaper Granma said today, the submarine tendon was active for “voice traffic corresponding to international telephone service.” This means that when Mesa spoke before parliament, he already had information to give and preferred to withhold it, to hide it from us. Why? Perhaps out of fear that with that announcement he might stoke the excitement so many of us have to be connected to the Internet. Better to hide the details from us because he knows no information strategy other than secrecy. “The less they know the better,” seems to be the currency of our leaders.

But this world is a mere handkerchief, a baseball, a sour orange, and teensy. A few days ago the American firm Renesys announced (here and here) it had detected latency in the Alba-1 cable. First it was traffic in just one direction, which later balanced in the coming and going of kilobytes. The cable was alive, awake. Two years after arriving on Cuban soil, at a cost of $70 million and a thousand miles in length, the long fiberoptic serpent started to work. We had to learn, as so often happens, through the foreign media. Only when the news was already everywhere did the official press confirm it this morning in a brief note. A note that also warned that “the commissioning of the submarine cable will not automatically mean that the possibilities of access will multiply.”

The truth is, I no longer believe anything. Not the passive National Assembly, nor a minister who practices secrecy, nor the official journalists who were in that session of parliament and didn’t report on the absence of such an important topic, nor a newspaper that only publishes when its silences are uncovered. Much less do I believe in the character as true citizens of all those thousands of Cubans who have remained silent and have been satisfied with the least access to the Internet of any country in this hemisphere.

Yoani Sánchez

24 January 2013

Is Killing a Cow Worse than Murder? / Miguel Iturria Medina #Cuba

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Lic. Miguel Iturria Medina

For years I’ve heard the popular saying that initially provoked skepticism and today, after learning something about the law, makes me uncomfortable. Surely almost all of us have heard it, and many have said it. It’s said that, under the Law, someone who kills a cow is more severely published than someone who takes the life of another human being: “It’s worse to kill a cow than…”

The phrase deserves a brief analysis from the perspective of the Penal Code to try to answer its macabre sense. I will take as a reference the crime of Illegal Slaughter of Major Livestock and the Sale of Their Meat, under Article 240.1 of this body of law: continue reading

He who, without prior authorization from the state agency specifically empowered to do so, slaughters major livestock, is punished with imprisonment from four to ten years.

The other point of reference is the crime of homicide which is governed by Article 261 of the Penal Code:

Whoever kills another, shall be punished by imprisonment from seven to fifteen years.

Analyzing both offenses, obviously shows that in the general case, the popular voice is not correct; because while the Illegal Slaughter of Major Livestock (which includes cattle and horses) has a criminal penalty range of four to ten years imprisonment, murder has a wider range of seven to fifteen years.

Another criterion against that phrase is that the Illegal Slaughter allows for alternatives to prison sentences when the amount is five or fewer years’ imprisonment (With correctional labor with or without confinement and restriction of freedom).

So far we have disproved the aforementioned popular opinion, but it is possible, though rare, that the statement is true. Both offenses have room to coincide in the criminal context: between seven to ten years of imprisonment. So it could be that someone, for example, is sentenced for sacrificing a cow to ten years in prison while another is sentenced to seven for murder.

With all due respect for the animal kingdom and for some kind of Hindu philosophy I’m not familiar with, the value of human life is unparalleled. These overlaps should be deleted in future amendments to the Criminal Law.

January 19 2013

From the Virtual World to the Real World / Yoani Sanchez #Cuba

Image taken from http://www.flickr.com/photos/ervega/532592865/
“To express yourself is freedom.” Image taken from http://www.flickr.com/photos/ervega/532592865/

The screen illuminates a face while fingers race over the keyboard. Outside, life goes on, the cars honk and a dog hurries past the door. It would appear that once across the threshold of the house the technological life would give way to reality, but at the beginning of this third millennium it is already impossible to delineate the boundary between the virtual world and the other, concrete and physical, that surrounds us. Walking the sidewalks, peering around corners, exchanging words with friends, one always has something of that other component anchored to this universe of pixels and kilobytes.

A blogger is a mongrel creature, standing between two dimensions: the area where she lives and a cyberspace of infinite possibilities for expression and creation. continue reading

She is a missing link between so many phenomena: journalism and digital writing; Internet experts and the upstarts of the web; protestors with cobblestones in hand and the new civic demands via Facebook or Change.org. The dilemma between living or narrating what happens to us via Twitter; observing or clicking the iPhone’s camera; loving or sending an emoticon of a smiley face via cellphone to our partner. The dilemma of behaving as citizens only when when we are in the great World Wide Web, or also doing so in this world of honking horns, passing dogs and bodies that feel.

When we talk of being an internaut in this 21st century, we include in this word the concept of responsibility. The responsibility of assuming a public voice although we are hiding behind a pseudonym. The responsibility of exposing our opinions to the gaze of millions of potential readers. The personal and social cost of so much boldness is felt immediately to a greater or lesser degree.

The neighbor who tells us, “I read you,” with a hint of a complicit smile, the opponent who distorts our words to present them as the opposite, and even those who allude to our writings who will say, “And what made you say all that?” Once we cross this subtle line between silence and expression on the net there will be no peace… but neither will there be boredom.

If, in addition to all that, our voice on the web makes someone powerful feel uncomfortable, say a large corporation or an authoritarian government, then the effects can be more serious still. We tend to be the weakest link for the one who breaks the chain. Although we present ourselves only as victims, that doesn’t always conform to the truth. To see a blogger as a little David confronting the enormous strength of the Goliath of officialdom or of the corporate monopolies has generated a way of thinking we need to escape from.

Technology has no ethics in and of itself, it adopts the a part of the personality and behavior of whoever uses it. In blogs we find everything: from laudable altruistic projects to the most base human passions. We have made cyberspace into our own image and likeness, riddled with light and darkness that portray our baseness and our highest acts of kindness.

Image taken from http://www.flickr.com/photos/ervega/532497170/
“To express yourself is freedom.” Image taken from http://www.flickr.com/photos/ervega/532497170/

Citizens 2.0 versus Regimes 0.2

Fingers deformed from so much typing, thoughts expressed in groups of 140 characters, multitasking, the ability to read on the diagonal and a faraway look as if life does not behave like windows that open and close, recycling bin included. Anyone who is a consummate internaut has been transformed into a kind of mutant, a being trapped between the universality of its virtual spaces and the local condition of its existence.

Blogs today are a conglomeration of thematic and formal plurality, difficult to define and classify. From fabulous collectors of recipes to frustrated writers who post everything they write, sublime or ridiculous; baseball fanatics who defend, in each post, the plays of their favorite team to the forgetful who one day created a site in Blogger.com or in WordPress and there’s still nothing there but “Hello World.”

And above all, there are the blogs where we put into play life and liberty; blogs that risk everything, with the risk growing with every word published.

In countries where there is a strict government monopoly on the press, we independent informers are considered by official propaganda to be enemies, traitors, mercenaries. Coincidentally, in these societies, it usually happens that access to the Internet is restricted and severely controlled. They are, for the most part, nations where connectivity is a privilege awarded to the most reliable, or where the web ends up being a grotesquery of filtered sites, sophisticated firewalls, and disciplined technological soldiers who search through forums and portals.

It gives us the impression that to expose ourselves by having an informative or opinion-related blog under regimes of a totalitarian nature would be like shooting oneself in the head; like pointing to yourself when a cop passes by shouting, “Yes! It was me!” However — here comes the paradox — in countries like this expressing yourself in cyberspace maybe more likely to succeed than to doing so in real life.

The reprimand against dissident bloggers tends to occur most often in the physical world. Surveillance, persecution, imprisonment and, in the most dramatic cases, death as a punishment for daring to comment or report.

There are also other strategies to try to destroy us in life: the media firing squad in the official press, the stoning of our public image through defamation, intimidation of the friends who surround us, warning them to stay away, and certain threats into the ears of the people we love the most, tend to complete the “dissuasive” picture that has led to the closing of more than one controversial site.

Where the thought police have been particularly sophisticated is in the battle in cyberspace. There they counter-attack, launching waves of kilobytes against us in response to our criticisms and complaints. It is at this point that we can give in to the impulse to respond to insults with insults, screams with screams, and with this strategy the intolerant have dragged us into the path of verbal violence.

It could happen that instead of resorting to attacks as protection, we begin to dedicate a good part of the texts we write to justifying ourselves or trying to clean up our image. The anonymous accusers, then, will have managed to knock us off the social path by locking us into this labyrinth of self-defense. The responsibility is all the stronger in that case.

Many have passed through circumstances of this kind, we know that these become the moments when we truly ask ourselves for what and why did we one day lean over a computer, type a couple of sentences and publish our first post. Moments that will become increasingly frequent as we cyber-activists keep reporting. Every day we ask ourselves if it’s worth it to pay such a high public and personal price in order to relate what is happening in our respective countries.

More than a stretch of this path of doubts and fears we travel alone. Thousands of abandoned blogs, or blogs marked with a sign that says “closed” hanging on their home page, testify to this. Blogging is an endurance race hung with obstacles. And it’s more common to become entangled in one of these obstacles than to continue along the track.

It will require a good dose of willpower to manage it, but the solidarity of others will be determining. Every time makes it more difficult for authoritarian regimes to act against dissidents and defenders of human rights without provoking condemnation on the web. A label repeated ad nauseam on Twitter, a petition with thousands of signatures for the release of an individual, a flood of demanding messages to the web officials of certain governments, are strategies that bring results.

Virtual tools affect reality and make it change. Tahir Square in Egypt is perhaps the best example of that connection. The citizen dissatisfaction with a three-decade-old authoritarian government found the vital tools to bind themselves and hold together on social networks, blogs and mobile phones.

In the Arab revolutions, screens and keyboards were a channel for the rebellion, but the boiling point was reached shoulder to shoulder, body to body, in the streets. The virtual world threw all these young people back to reality, more empowered, more citizens.

23 January 2013

Violence increases against dissidents in Cuba (Part 1) / Pieces of the Island #Cuba

From TranslatingCuba.com site manager: Add this blog — Pieces of the Island — to your reading list. As always “Pieces of the Island” brings up-to-the minute news directly from Cuba — and in particular from places other than Havana — from a broad range of activists who don’t all run their own blogs. Without this reporting those who prefer to read the news from Cuba in English would never know what is happening to them.

Violent arrest of Jorge Vazquez Chaviano in the month of January, 2013.

Between the days of January 19th and 22nd, state sponsored violence against the Cuban opposition aggressively increased in different parts of the country. Some of the aggressions started on Saturday 19th, the year anniversary of the death of Wilman Villar Mendoza, a dissident who spent more than 50 days on hunger strike demanding his release from an unjust prison sentence, and continued through the morning hours of Tuesday the 22nd, when Rapid Response Brigades used unknown toxic substances to try and interrupt an encounter among dissidents in the central region of the country:

After brutality in Mafo, Contramaestre, vigilance and repudiation continues

As numerous activists and blogs reported on Saturday, January 19th, the home of Luis Enrique Lozada in Mafo, Contramaestre was raided by mobs made up by Rapid Response Brigades, State Security and political police agents of the regime. The home was destroyed and all those present were beat with cables, sticks, knives, and a sort of whip, as well as other sharp weapons. Images of the results- broken heads, wounded bodies, etc. – went around the world (see here) and, on the following day, the harassment continued. continue reading

José Daniel Ferrer García, general coordinator of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) denounced that during the dawn hours of Sunday, “another attack took place, this time against the home of Ovidio Martin Castellanos, a coordinator of UNPACU in the province of Santiago de   Cuba“. (Video)

Meanwhile, the home of political prisoner Jorge Cervantes, also located in Contramaestre, was attacked in a similar fashion, reducing it to ruble, leaving the wife of Cervantes, Lady in White Kenia Leguen, and her two underage children without a roof.

In an act of solidarity, Luis Enrique Lozada offered his home to the Lady in White and her two children.

So many stones were thrown at Kenia’s home that the roof was considerably damaged“, explained Ferrer Garcia, “This is not the first time this happens to this family- the young Kenia told me, with much pain in her voice, that she was condemned to live without a roof“.

In other news, on Saturday afternoon, dissident Jesus Diaz Morales was arrested in Velasco, Holguin, for having convoked a peaceful march in honor of Wilman Villar. On Monday, the 21st, mobs once again surrounded the home of Luis Enrique Lozada, watching and intimidating all those who were inside. In this case, the mobs left a few hours later, according to a tweet published by Anyer Anotnio Blanco (@anyerantoniobla).

These aggressive actions will continue, and they will correspond with the level of non-violent activism carried out by UNPACU, in favor of freedom and democracy in Cuba, as we keep growing in number of activism and actions“, declared Ferrer, “Without a doubt, our activism in a phenomenon that is very worrying for the tyranny but very hopeful for the people“.

Mobs try to impede encounter of the Ladies in White

Agents arrest Ladies in White trying to make it to meeting on January 21st, 2013.

On Monday, January 21st, when the world celebrated Martin Luther King day, the Ladies in White held an encounter at their headquarters on Neptune Street in Havana to pay tribute to the civil rights leader and, at the same time, to Wilman Villar Mendoza, as well as to demand the freedom of all political prisoners. The presence of State Security was not absent.

According to Sara Marta Fonseca Quevedo, one of the Ladies in White who managed to make it to the encounter, “during the 116th meeting of the group, various women who tried to make it were arrested, while the headquarter was surrounded by paramilitary mobs, the political police, and State Security. They also blocked off traffic on Neptune   Street, a main street in Havana. No car could pass by…all of this to keep women from arriving“. However, the dissident points out that 42 members managed to surpass cordons of vigilance and make it to the house.

But the mobs increased their violent actions, shouting slogans such as “Use a machete, theirs only a few of them“, and other offensive phrases. (Video here)

10 women were reported detained upon trying to arrive.

Despite the offensive slogans, the Ladies in White responded by maintaining their civility, shouting “Freedom“, “Long live human rights“, “Long live Laura Pollan“, and “Freedom for all political prisoners“.

Once again, it has been demonstrated that the regime highly fears unity within the opposition, as well as the Ladies in White, out on the streets of Cuba“, expressed Fonseca Quevedo, “This implants terror in them, to think that peaceful women march through the streets of Havana to demand freedom. I want everyone to know that we, the Ladies in White, will keep walking for freedom in Cuba“.

On the previous day, Sunday January 20th, ‘Hablemos Press’ reported that 116 Ladies in White managed to march and arrive to Mass throughout the country, but a total of 36 were arbitrarily arrested, deported, and threatened.

Toxic gases and substances against dissidents in Sagua la Grande

Mobs surround the home of Jorge Vazquez in Sagua la Grande. January 21st, 2013

In Sagua la Grande, Villa Clara, paramilitary mobs and police agents lasted the entire day of January 21st carrying out an act of repudiation and keeping vigilance over a group of activists from the Central Opposition Coalition and the Orlando Zapata Tamayo National Resistance Front who were meeting in the home of former political prisoner Jorge Vázquez Chaviano, to pay tribute to Martin Luther King Jr, Wilman Villar Mendoza and to discuss important subjects of the opposition.

Jorge Luis García Pérez ‘Antúnez’, leader of the Front and one of the dissidents present, explained that during the acts of repudiation, the agents “shouted offensive phrases” at the group of more than 20 dissidents in the house. He added that there were “underage children and an elderly woman inside as well“.

In the afternoon, two activists of the Cuban Reflection MovementNosbel Jomolca and Juan Carlos Fernandez– were arrested as they tried entering the house.

Regardless, Antunez feels that the encounter was “a success“, considering that none of the neighbors of Vazquez Chaviano participated in the repudiation.

The mobs of the dictatorship have not been able to receive support of the neighbors. Far from helping them, they maintained their solidarity with us“, said Antunez, “The soldiers became very aggressive, inciting us to come out of the house to beat us with stick, but we congratulate and appreciate the support of the people of Sagua la Grande. Right in front of the repressive mobs, they refused to participate“.

Clearly bothered, during the dawn hours of Tuesday, January 22nd, political police officials launched toxic gases and liquids at the home full of dissidents. The attack caused cough, skin eruptions, tachycardia, and breathing problems on its victims, including the underage ones.

Antunez sent out an alert to the world of what could happen to all those who suffered the attacks, seeing as they have already begun to show some symptoms.

Despite all of this, the dissident leader said that they will continue resisting and that “regardless of all the tactics of the tyranny, the Cuban Resistance, beyond any organization, is united…united in action“.

The repression against Cuban dissidents, organized by the dictatorship and carried out by agents of State Security, the political police, the Ministry of the Interior and members of the Rapid Response Brigade, has not stopped, but it has clearly increased during the first weeks of 2013. This past weekend it escalated to a level of immeasurable violence, where the lives of all those who have decided to fight for freedom are in danger.

Three Kings Day with the Ladies in White / Lilianne Ruiz #Cuba

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More than 40 children with their parents met on the eve of January 6th at the headquarters of the Ladies in White, at 962 Neptune Street, to celebrate the traditional “Day of the Three Kings.” Bertha Soler, leader of the Movement, began the event remembering Laura Pollan, who from 2004 celebrate this day especially dedicated to bringing the happiness stolen from the children of the political prisoners and in particular the 75 of the Cuban Black Spring. continue reading

The party didn’t lack a clown to enliven it with puppets and interactive games. The children’s laughter and dancing filled with the small room where nostalgia continues to make itself present. Undoubtedly the most anticipated moment was the giving of the gifts the children had asked for in their little notes.

A boy dressed as Santa Claus delighted the imagination. Bertha Soler and Laurita L. Pollan (daughter of the late Laura), gave the children dolls, kitchenette sets, carts, airplanes, all taken from the magical Christmas bags for the occasion.

Then, around the dining table, as is customary at Cuban children’s birthdays, everyone sang congratulations to the children and offered them a delicious chocolate cake and the traditional cold salad, croquettes, candy, chocolate and soft drinks. A piñata in the form of a clown and a raffle were the culmination of this festival full of surprises.

At the end, Bertha Soler said: “For us today, the eve of the Day of the Three Kings in 2013, is as always dedicated to Cuban children. To the children who are suffering right now because their parents are imprisoned, the children of the Ladies in White, the children of the community around our headquarters.

In 2004 we started having activities for the Day of the Three Kings for children suffering at the time, who were the children of the 75 men and one woman who went to prison. The main organizer and facilitator of this activity was Laura Pollan.

In 2012 we could not carry out the activities because we were mourning the physical loss of Laura. In her honor this year we started the activity projecting photos from previous years in the celebration of this day, where she is disguised as the little old fairy. Here no one can do it like Laura did.

The children who did not meet her at least can see if these slides what we did,accompanied by the song “Laura Pollan” composed by Amaury Gutierrez.

The children had so much fun with the clown, who kept them smiling for an hour as they all received their toys. Thanks to all the people of goodwill, Cuban exiles, for their collaboration, support and solidarity that made this activity possible.  We are very grateful not to be forgotten by them and this is the result: exiled brothers and people of goodwill who contributed with their solidarity to make this activity possible. This was the way to make these children happy.

Cuban children don’t have Three Kings Day because the Cuban government has set high prices shops for toys such that parents cannot afford them. They are only available to those who receive money from abroad, and enough money, so that they don’t have to pass up buying food to buy toys to some children. There are other children who can not enjoy this.

Here in Havana we had this activity today, yesterday the delegations of the Ladies in White in Holguin and Granma had it. Also on this day delegations in Pinar del Rio, Villa Clara and Matanzas are celebrating. And tomorrow will be in Santiago de Cuba and Guantanamo.

Meanwhile Laura Maria Labrada Pollan said: “We are here today to celebrate the Day of the Three Kings, you know every year since 2004 my mom was the host of the Magi in the entire island.

The holidays became reality in this house, from Santiago de Cuba, Guantanamo to Pinar del Rio. All of the 75 women came with their children to celebrate this feast. Actually, my mom came up with this party because the children were very sad, their parents had been unjustly imprisoned, and she created this activity for children at least once a year to have a day of happiness and joy. As you know we love family.

We are here today remembering my mother first and giving children the happiness they deserve, and not just the group of 75, because very few of them are still here in Cuba but we have added many women and we wanted do this party as my mom did, with the same love that in all these prior years she showed. She is here with us and with the children too.

About my mom, what I can say? The most, the greatest thing that God could give me. Thanks to her I have the life I have and I’m in the place I’m in right now. Without my mom I would not have been anyone and I thank her for teaching me to live for the good of humanity in this country. I love her, I know she is watching us from heaven, and all the good things that we’re doing, thanks to her who was the founder of the Ladies in White, today we continue her legacy.

We don’t know when we will be able to stop, because “while there are political prisoners — as she put it — there will be Ladies in White.”

Lilianne Ruíz

January 23 2013

Obama for a Seat in Cuba’s National Assembly / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo #Cuba

The presidents of the United States have been a taboo topic in Cuba for 55 years. The image of the Evil Imperialist could only be authorized by the upper echelons of the propagandists of the Communist Party (the only legal one in the country) or, where appropriate, by the Council of State itself. The idea was to depersonalize and discredit all the men in the White House (the pamphleteer documentary filmmaker Santiago Alvarez incarnated the vile vanguard of that mission). Every foreign enemy had to be to artificially animalized, assassinated like one more internal opponent. Only in this way, by elementary media comparison before the eyes of a captive audience, could the image of the sublime Maximum Leader shine more brightly in our hearts:

Fidel the future, Eisenhower the fossil; Fidel proletarian idol, Kennedy bourgeois asshole; Fidel internationalist guerrilla, Johnson international warmonger; Fidel sincere to the bone, Nixon scandalously fallacious; Fidel perpetual Comrade, Ford ephemeral as a model year; Fidel pitcher, Carter catcher, Fidel a still young star, Reagan an almost senile stunt man; Fidel in the Special Period in Times of Peace, Bush-the-father post-perestroika bomber; Fidel celibate, Clinton promiscuous; Fidel a horse, W. Bush a donkey; Fidel a dove repeatedly robbed of his Nobel Peace Prize, Obama a white hawk in a blackbird’s skin (showing their racism, the Cuban state media accused him of betraying his race). continue reading

After nearly a decade of censorship in Cuba (despite the fact that the signal is received and the channel is invaded by Cuban staff), the TeleSUR channel started to be freely seen in Cuba as a New Year’s gift from the Raul regime. It is no longer just Walter Martinez’s pirate eye-patch, savoring the deferred Bolivarian pap of the continent’s illiterates and fanatics, indeed now we have Mr. Barack Obama live and well on every television set in Havana.

And, to the discomfort of everyone at home, it then turns out that the skinny guy from the Mulatto House in Washington doesn’t scream or threaten the public with his hooked fingers, nor does he wear a military uniform, nor does he spend hour after hour jabbering on to the millions and millions in his Babylonian nation. And to make matters worse, the guy looks like a citizen and, what’s more, spoke about urgent ecological concerns, the rights of minorities (he represented the LGBT community better than our National Assembly), of social projects without the need to sacrifice another half century (while simultaneously the police authorize a protest against him).

Afterwards, in the neighborhood, someone made a joke about how in the upcoming elections the ballot would include an extra little box to validate Member of Parliament Obama. That would give publicity to this historic little joke even on the internet. If I were the Cuban State, I would not take lightly this symptom of tastiness or scorn for Cuban neighborhood socialism. And, just in case, I would install one more arm chair in the meeting hall of the National Assembly.

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo
Havana

Translated from PenultimosDias.com.

January 23 2013

Is Galiano Being Revived? / Fernando Damaso #Cuba

Photo: Peter Deel

In Galiano, Havana’s former main commercial street, they are installing street lamps that are exact reproductions of the original ones, which have decayed or been destroyed by the passage of time and apathy. The fronts of its surviving buildings are also being repainted, though with garish colors accented in white, which clash with the surroundings. Nevertheless, at least it is something, as long as it does simply end up being a scenic backdrop for tourists’ snapshots.

If they are indeed trying to revive Galiano, it is necessary to do more than than what is currently being done. They could begin by removing the sliding metal doors which cover the glass storefronts and entrances, turning these establishments into virtual safes without any real valuables to protect.

Shops and retail businesses with display windows, which have been closed or fallen on hard times, should be reopened and stocked with merchandise. Small stores that sell meat and groceries but lack refrigeration or are in unhygienic locations should be closed. Stalls that have been set up doorways and windows of homes that had in the past been commercial buildings should be regulated.

The so-called “corporate colors,” which some businesses use to identify themselves without regard for a building’s architectural style or the building materials used (ETESCA’s blue and white, Sylvain’s red and white, and Rapiditos’ ketchup and mustard for example), should be prohibited.

Trasval, that lugubrious mausoleum and monument to bad taste, located in what had been the well-lit and pleasant Ten Cent at the corner of Galiano and San Rafael, should be made to disappear.*

Streets and sidewalks should be repaired and washed daily. Retail businesses and stores should be required to do the same with their entrances and interiors. Illuminated store signs and advertisements, which give so much life to a street during the day as well as at night, should be installed.

This host of tasks cannot be accomplished by the state, which has been the party responsible for the disappearance and destruction of the previously existing retail network and of so much cumulative decay over the years. In spite of its “Golden Rule” and “MS” seal (mejor servicio or better service), it foolishly expropriated everything in the 1970s only to let it all languish. This is why private and cooperative initiative and investment are essential. They are the only guarantees of identity, diversity, efficiency, quality and profitability, replacing the term “users” with “customers.”

Clearly, it is necessary to eliminate the obsolete and unnatural restrictions still in effect and to allow for private employment and commerce without limitations on space or personnel. Retail business administration is not a task for the state, especially since it has quite amply demonstrated its inability to do it. It would then be left to city government to provide what are among its real responsibilities—the necessary infrastructure (water, sewage, electricity, gas, communications, etc.)

Beyond that, there are other important commercial streets in terrible condition such as Neptune, San Miguel, the previously mentioned San Rafael, Reina, Monte and Belascoaín, to name but a few, that they could also begin resurrecting. Havana deserves this and much more given that compensation for all the damage that has been and continues to be inflicted is long overdue.

*Translator’s note: ETESCA is Cuba’s national telecommunications company. Sylvain is a chain of bakeries and sweet shops. Trasval is a department store located in what had been a Woolworth’s, known locally as Ten Cent. Rapiditosa chain of outdoor, fast-food restaurants. All are state-owned.

January 22 2013

Cuba’s Internet Cable From Venezuela Awakens / Yoani Sanchez #Cuba

cableindexIf you took a poll in our streets about Cubans’ most serious problems, the answers would agree on many points. Most people would talk about the cumbersome dual currency, the low wages, and the difficulties in finding housing. The oldest would talk about the poor pensions they receive, and many would also expound on the lack of freedoms and rights. The youngest, however, would list among their biggest problems lack of access to the Internet for people on the Island.Those under thirty don’t want to settle for seeing cyberspace in some remote place that almost no one can enter. They want to dive into that sea of kilobytes!

This situation of disconnect could be about to change. From the second week of January the U.S. company Renesys, which monitors Internet traffic, has noted that the fiber optic cable between Cuba and Venezuela is active. At a cost of $70 million, the tendon was installed in February of 2011, but still today it has not been publicly announced that it is working. In these two years, the secrecy has fueled rumors that the so-called Alba-1 failed because of corrupt dealings. However, today there is technological evidence that data is moving through the fiber optic cable.

As always, the official media is silent and many TV programs continue to show the Internet as a conglomeration of violence, pornography and false information. In the few public cybercafes, an hour’s access to the web cost a third of a month’s wages. Not a single internal signal denotes that something has changed. Many young people, however, are excited and anxious about the information from Renesys. The great World Wide Web may be closer than it appears.

22 January 2013